And yet the thanks they get is the state of North Carolina (and probably others too, but NC is the one I've heard about recently) shitting all over them because they want to sell their vehicles directly to people instead of having to go through "third-party dealers".

In Australia, we call it Tall Poppy Syndrome [wikipedia.org] where someone that is doing outstanding work is seen as a threat, a target and something to be cut back down to size. Though in this case, I would say that there is a hint of Schadenfreude [wikipedia.org] thrown into the mix as well.

It's also very much political. Elon Musk's and Tesla's success under this loan program means that it was a Good Idea, and the Republicans don't want ANYTHING that President Obama or the Democrats have been involved in to be considered a success. They want all these loans to fail as proof that Keynesian economics is flawed, that the very idea of the government loaning money to renewable energy ventures (rather than their own buddies, Big Oil) is doomed to failure.

The GOP is so out of their minds with insane rage that they would do anything to ensure that no progress is made under a Democratic administration, even if it means Americans have to suffer a prolonged recovery. They want the sole credit. They also want to make everyone forget that it was their own policies of deregulation that caused the economy to tank in the first place, so that their buddies on Wall Street can make even more money without being held accountable. The only kind of capitalism that these assholes want is the kind that makes THEM richer. That means pumping more oil, for one.

Your post is incorrect. Speaking as a blatant republican and businessman, I don't want the U.S. to invest in loan guarantees for fly by night operations that have absolutely no chance of success. Elon Musk, who successfully founded Paypal, knows how to run a company, had a real business plan and had a legitimate chance to make a long term profit was worthy of a federal loan guarantee. Solyndra is what we are trying to prevent.

BTW - good work rewriting history - lax lending standards / pushing acceptance of sub-prime loans that caused the housing crisis and recession were not caused by republicans. This shouldn't be a news flash...

Speaking as a blatant democrat and businessman, I agree with your first paragraph. Tesla had a good chance. I cheered the decision to extend the government backed loan. They'd already produced the most successful electric car in my lifetime, losing not too much money in the process, while developing core competencies - the drive train and battery packs. The basic principle that government should invest where there is a track record of success falls on deaf ears in Washington. Companies like Fisker did not meet this threshold, and Solyndra was essentially an idea on paper, worth more research, but not a half billion dollars. I think a 1 in 3 success rate is about the best we could expect from government investments, regardless of the party in charge. No VCs I know of have a 1 in 3 success rate. Still... Fisker was a doomed investment. I was pissed when I heard of it. I'm just glad we never gave them the second half of the money.

As for the second part, yes democrats pushed for bad loans, but unregulated banks got unregulated insurance on unregulated derivatives, while everyone knew that they were all too big to fail. That lack of regulation on businesses that the government will give a trillion dollars to before allowing to fail is the GOP's fault. There's blame to go around, and that's not rewriting history. Still, good post overall.

The low-interest loans are not related to the "bailout" funds that GM and Chrysler have received, nor are they related to the 2009 economic stimulus package. The Department of Energy loan program was created in 2007 during the George Bush administration in order to get more fuel-efficient vehicle options to U.S. consumers and to decrease the country's dependence on foreign oil.

And the fact you were voted 5 interesting for being a bigot shows how absolutly worthless/. comments are.

Now for the deregulation TRUTH [nytimes.com] how it was the DNC that refuesed to let Bush add regulations to prevent the collapse. But then again the truth doesn't ever seem to line up with DNC talking points, so keep spewing your bigioted BS lies.

If your mortgage has a early repayment penalty then you got screwed hard. The only time I have sever seen that is when someone had no idea at all what they were doing and said yes to everything the banker asked.

Let me guess you also paid "points" as well. Intrest rates have been so low that paying $1000 in points to lower it by 0.01% is worthless unless you are buying a 2.5million mansion.

Taken as a whole, government investments like have very rarely lost. Even in the contentious past 5 years, the government investment in emerging technologies have been very profitable, even with the poster boys like Solyndra which are used to argue that all government investment in technology is a bad idea. This argument is usually made on the Internet, which is more than a little bit ironic.

but if the government is loaning out taxpayer money without adequate return on investment, the taxpayers should be pissed off as much as a bank's shareholders would be.

The government is not a company. It does not need to make a direct return to do a good thing. Consider the government spending $100 million for a bridge. Say the bridge creates $200 million in economic activity by joining communities. If the government taxes at 40% they will only get $80 million back. Does that mean it was a bad investment? That doesn't mean the government spends money on anything. How is anyone really anti-government. I know of no alternative system. I propose a real discussion ab

Funny how the coffers of Social Security are "still bleeding" and yet they have a greater than 2 trillion surplus in T-bills. Pretty good for a pay-as-you go system. Funny how SS has been going bankrupt for the last 70+ year.

Even without a penalty the US Treasury will make money. They get the principal back – just less interest.

Most corp bonds issued that have a call feature in them (i.e. a early repay feature) has a penalty. Normally 1 to 2 percent in the early life of the loan, but steadily decreasing.

Here is an example. A company issues a 10 year bond at 10%. 3 years latter the interest rate is 5%. They call back the high interest rate bonds and issue new ones at 5%. This is bad for the bond holder because instead of having a 10% bond they now have cash. If they went ahead and replaced it they would only get 5%. In order to stop that, the company usually has to call the bond at 102. - that is for every $100 they need to pay $102.

I doubt the US Treasury would have put a penalty for an early call – but I am just guessing.

The benefit of this kind of loan program is not in the interest earned, but in the fact that you get a successful company that creates jobs and pays taxes, which used to be considered a good thing. Having an additional player in a heavy industry also creates competition in a fairly consolidated sector, which also used to be considered a good thing.

These kind of government loans to business in the US go back to the 18th century, and were considered a very good idea until recently, when one of the two political parties lost its mind.

Its a sign of things to come for the economy though. If electric cars take over the market, the demand for car maintenance will collapse. Thats a big chunk of the job market in some areas and there will have to be some adjustment.

I have read elsewhere that servicing the Model S means topping up the wiper fluid and rotating the tyres. Braking is done mostly with the driveline. Suspension generally lasts the life of a car these days. Electric motors are super reliable. Single speed gearboxes are reliable, like a differential gear. You basically build it and never touch it again.

I'd leave partisanship out of it--I'm pretty sure it's more about money from car dealers both via campaign contributions and taxes.

Think of it this way--that car lot takes up a lot property. Property gets taxed at a local level. There were a bunch of localities that had problems when their Pontiac and Saturn dealerships closed down. People start buying cars over the Internet and not through local dealers, there goes those dealers and their local taxes. I'm sure there are plenty of cities who'd rather not see that happen.

"When manufacturers discontinue a brand -- such as Pontiac, Mercury, Oldsmobile or Saturn -- auto dealers still remain to help the customer,"

In reality, if Tesla were to go out of business, individual mechanics would open shop assuming there was a business demand. If there wasn't any demand, then it wouldn't matter if the sale originally involved a dealer or not. (Unless said former-dealer was unclear on the concept of business.)

"When manufacturers discontinue a brand -- such as Pontiac, Mercury, Oldsmobile or Saturn -- auto dealers still remain to help the customer,"

In reality, if Tesla were to go out of business, individual mechanics would open shop assuming there was a business demand. If there wasn't any demand, then it wouldn't matter if the sale originally involved a dealer or not. (Unless said former-dealer was unclear on the concept of business.)

Exactly. The dealer model hasn't exactly helped Fisker any - while all the dealers remain, they all want exorbitant amounts of money to do any work on the vehicle. And an independent group has surfaced offering support [autoblog.com] for the vehicles regardless - but of course, you still have to pay.

Now you have the result of owners having paid thousands more because of the extra middle man - and certainly the extra middle man didn't help Fisker's profitability any, either.

Well you're forgetting the revenue side of things from dealers. Not that Tesla couldn't do the same thing up to a point.

Car Sales generate very lucrative sales taxes as well as vehicle registration fees etc. Dealerships must have licenses and in some states, state approval to operate (read: $$$ in the state coffers)

Dealers make heavy investments in their franchise, meaning that they'll employ workers and have a presence that also generates lots of sales tax revenue from parts/maintenance and resale.

Most states also want a local "neck to wring" when it comes to things like lemon laws. If they're dealing with an out of state provider, it complicates their remediation process. Not that it's not impossible to enforce their laws on somebody selling something in state (uh, Internet Sales Taxes anyone?)

But the cronyism that exists and has existed because car dealers contribute to political campaigns and get nice laws passed to prohibit competition.

It's all about money and influence and like the Taxi Apps for example fighing DC and NYC to allow folks to order a cab their way or AirBnb for example running afoul with NYC, it goes to show how much red tape and regulation there is in our world.

Which will make me feel a lot better when I can afford a 7-series. Sometime next decade. Maybe.

Anyway, point being, he just paid back a loan which, in effect, created a luxury car company. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, and it may actually help push electric cars forward, but I think his comment was meant to be a little bit of a "take that" to people who don't like government contracts like this given out. And I can't help but noticing that he still hasn't produced something that even the upper middle

Anyway, point being, he just paid back a loan which, in effect, created a luxury car company.

Well no. They created a car company. The next model which is being designed now is the normally-priced car. If they can stay in business long enough to build it, which seems likely, then we should see it roll out in a bit. We wouldn't have had to do this if the automakers had made EVs the first time around, e.g. during the EV-1 era... instead of flirting with them, then crushing them and declaring them undesirable, because they couldn't make service revenues on them. The two groups which stood to lose were

Anyone who wants to pay $30K for a car is not going to be too concerned about gas costs.

I am, and gas costs made me decide to pay $30K for my Nissan LEAF.

I analyzed TCO (excluding maintenance costs, which are much lower for electrics, but I couldn't quantify that so I just ignored it) for about 20 different vehicles, including EVs, hybrids and pure ICE vehicles,. My model assumed that the new vehicle was going to be an additional vehicle, and that the other (gas-burning) vehicle would be available for trips beyond the range of the EV. I assumed very conservative ranges for the EVs, for example I estimated the LEAF's range at 60 miles (it's really more like 80-120, depending on conditions). Finally, I created a statistical model of my driving habits and calculated the total cost over 8 years.

The result was that the three EVs I looked at had the top three spots... they were the cheapest to drive overall, in spite of being by far the most expensive up front. Even better, thanks to tax credits the break-even point was at 2-3 years. Without the tax credits it was about 6 years. The vehicle immediately behind the EVs was the 18K Honda Insight hybrid, then a mix of other hybrids and more-efficient gas vehicles and finally a long tail of gas vehicles trailing the pack.

Of course, your driving patterns may be different, your electricity costs may be higher or gas prices lower (oh, I assumed that gas prices would continue increasing at the same rate they've increased over the last 8 years), etc., etc, etc., but I've walked several other people through applying my model to their situations and in every single case the EVs have been extremely competitive -- and usually the very cheapest.

In practice, what I've found -- for me -- is that my model was very conservative. In fact, the LEAF is even cheaper than I expected. Partly that's because I was able to get a better deal on the car than I had assumed, and partly it's because I do most of my charging at work, so my actual energy costs are dramatically lower than my model had anticipated.

Oh, and it's a very nice car, not a "tin can" that can't keep me as warm or cool as I like. It's a 3000-pound vehicle that accelerates 0-60 in 7.8 seconds, will do 90+ mph and can easily keep the cab at 60 degrees or 90 degrees or anywhere in between, regardless of outside temperature. It also has power everything, a nice stereo, GPS navigation, XM radio, bluetooth, backup camera, and computer or smartphone-based remote control... it's loaded. Of course, stomping on the gas pedal, driving 90 mph and blasting the heat (the AC doesn't use so much, plus it doesn't have to work against the heat generated by an ICE) will drop my range from 120 miles down to about 70 -- but my model only assumed a 60 mile range. It's a compact, but the alternatives I compared it against were also compacts.

EVs are very real, and very practical, today. And it's only going to get better. If Tesla can produce a $30K car with a 200-mile range, it'll be a huge hit with cost-conscious people, because that's enough range that for most people it can be a primary car -- no need for another ICE vehicle except on the rare long-distance trips, and it's cost-effective to rent for those.

Unless I owned the car, simply driving it wouldn't necessarily mean that I had to pay for the electricity either, since you could assume someone else bought their own electricity for their own car. In which case it would be free, and clearly not the situation that either of us is discussing.

I presume that we can agree that some assumptions don't need to be spelled out in an informal conversation, or alternately, you can continue to be pedantic.

You can afford to drive it - the cost of electricity per mile is far lower than the cost of petrol for the same distance. Your problem is you can't afford to *BUY* it. The good news is, those who can afford it are allowing the cost to come down as a result of mass production so the early adopters with deep pockets are subsidising the eventual more affordable versions for the rest of us.

Elon Musk really is African-American.... born in Africa as sure as anybody else on that continent. That ultimately he has more distantly European ancestors is where the comment flies in the face of reality and I doubt he claims he is "black" on racial profiles... but by definition of the term he deserves that "title" as much as anybody who is an immigrant from Africa.

On the other hand, this particular loan program was available to any American automobile company who bothered to apply. Both GM and Ford app

Musk has no employees on government assistance. Walmart explicitly pays employees just under the level to recieve government assistance so they don't have to provide health insurance. Tesla makes high quality products as they have shown they will reduce cost with out quality. Walmart sells disposable shit that ultimately cost more because they have no longevity. Teslas are manufactured in the usa. Walmart products are almost exclusively manufactured in china. Musk sells directly to his customers. Walmart is nothing but an unnecesary middle man getting wealthy off the ignorance of the people you think they are helping. Should I go on?

Never had a wardrobe malfunction eh? Musk is the harbringer of nipples, mark my words! Cheery looking rosy ones, sultry dark slippery ones, weird puffy ones, those pointy-outy ones that could cost an eye if you move too quickly in cold weather, oh yes.../none too subtle jab at the good old cornfed mask the detractors tend to don

... Like paying back your government loans instead of yelling "Too big to fail! ahahahaaha..." and running to some tropical island to take daily wealth showers and drink out of gold-lined cups.:/ They should be commended... it's a decidedly unamerican approach to business. Fiscal responsibility? It's like an F-word in Congress.

And, Solyndra ends up like Solyndra because we lost a subsidy battle with China.

I'm not sure if you are reporting the fact, or complaining about it. If you are just reporting it to provide accurate information, kudos for you. Not only are you are well informed, you have more common sense than most people I know (or know of), and please stop reading here:).

I'm forced, however, to remember anyone who complains about "subsidy battles" that the USA is huge on subsides, and wages this battle against many countries, several times winning it. Orange/orange juice and corn are quick examples.

Unfortunately, subsidies are a necessary evil, specially since they are, many times, not a tool to fight an external competitor, but to regulate the internal market. In this, no country is blameless.

And, Solyndra ends up like Solyndra because we lost a subsidy battle with China.

And we lost that battle because we were subsidizing a company using the wrong technology. Governments are terrible at "picking winners" and even worse at cutting their losses rather than shoveling good money after bad. If Solyndra had a good chance of success, they would have been able to attract private funding, and wouldn't have been asking for taxpayer money in the first place. Subsidizing basic R&D often makes sense. Subsidizing manufacturing does not.

DOE funds had a better rate of return than Mitt Romney's investment fund as per widely reported figures during the election.

Wrong. The DOE funds had a lower bankruptcy rate (8% vs 22%). That is NOT the same as a better rate of return. The government gives a loan, and loses it if the company goes bankrupt, and basically gets its money back if the company is successful. A private equity firm likewise loses its investment if the company goes bankrupt. But if the company is successful, a private equity firm can make many times its initial investment. Because of this asymmetry, PEs taking an equity stake, should and do make high risk investments than a lender would not. So the higher bankruptcy rate is expected. But the overall rate of return is still higher.

Bankers typically know fuckall about the industries they are financing so can't tell something with no hope from a sure success. All they can do is look at similar ventures from the past and hope, which means people doing something new can usually forget about bankers. Venture capitalists on the other hand sometimes know a bit about a specific industry, but they've been rare since before 2008.

I think this sends an excellent message to naysayers: Not all American startups with DOE loans end up like Solyndra.

In fact, of the 23 companies that received funding under the same program as Solyndra did, at least 19 of them are still in business - that's an 83% success rate. [cnn.com] When you factor in the fact that these were all loans that the free-market was too risk averse to take on itself, that number is pretty fantastic. Most venture capital funds are lucky to have a 10% success rate.

It largely depends on what you consider failure. WSJ cites that if you base success on breaking-even, 95% of start-ups fail [wsj.com], but if you base it on businesses failing so badly that investors are left with nothing at all, then it's closer to 30-40%.

Taxes aren't stealing - they're part of an agreement you've made with the government by continuing to live in the country.

In Solyndra's case the tax money was used to invest in a superior type of solar panel technology that ultimately turned out to cost more than the heavily subsidized Chinese solar panels. I guess the government could just stick to blowing people up, but I'd much rather prefer all the new technology and progress.

I think this sends an excellent message to naysayers: Not all American startups with DOE loans end up like Solyndra.

Keep in mind they didn't repay the loan out of revenue - they refinanced. (I.E. they sold bonds to repay the government loan.)

Bravo to Tesla, and let's hope the current trend continues.

Let's not count our chickens before they're hatched - Tesla is still saddled with over half a billion dollars in debt from this bond issue alone, and not so much currently in the way of income to cover

They aren't all going to be winners. Investment has some risk associated with it.

Tesla is a good example of a winner. Not only are they repaying their loan early, they've developed technology that electric drive vehicles use.

Everyone benefits (Tesla makes money, we get electric cars, the planet gets more efficient vehicles) , and it's because the government was willing to put money up where risk-averse private companies failed to do so.

Maybe this is because the oil industry evolved from the same people who ran the cattle industry, where a man's word was his bond and multi-million dollar deals were made on a handshake. Integrity was everything, and if you lost that, you simply weren't in the business anymore.

Oh GAWD please stop with the cheesy platitudes and the pining away for older, ostensibly better times. That is such a tired trope. Surely you recognize that this is a ludicrous and unprovable statement based on no evidence whatsoever?

And surely you recognize that this is a contradiction of your previous statement? The oil industry enjoys enormous tax breaks and subsidies [forbes.com]. Are those billions in subidies not government money? Is the oil industry somehow immune to corruption because of its mythical birth among cattle barons?

Did *you* read the article I linked? I'm not sure what part of $4.5B you don't understand. Surely I deserve some credit for not using some left-wing-nutjob link like this one [priceofoil.org] which chalks it up at $52B. To subsidize an industry that is comprised of the largest companies in the world pulling down profit margins as high as 12.5% in a given quarter (Exxon June 30, 2012) doesn't make any sense at all. To give tax breaks to these enormous (and enormously profitable companies) is really stupid. Please explain to

.... until their prices become comparable in purchase price to an otherwise equivalent gas-powered car, instead of paying a premium for them that makes them more of a status symbol of luxury than a practical automobile.

This is exactly what the horse and buggy industry said when the first cars came on the road. "Ha! Petrol! Where do they think they will get it, once on the road?" and "People already have horses - who's going to want to buy an automobile when the buggy is so much cheaper??"

.... until their prices become comparable in purchase price to an otherwise equivalent gas-powered car, instead of paying a premium for them that makes them more of a status symbol of luxury than a practical automobile.

Gas cars where like this once. The market tends to regular itself, even if it takes some time. Unless the government fucks it up, specially the USPO. Lets just hope that is not the case.

I think history has proven this again and again I believe that the technology for electric cars for everyone is not quite there yet, so focusing on the luxury market segment they can generate enough demand to have the possibility to actually work on this technology and, eventually, drive the prices down.
It's the same thing that happened with smartphones and other technologies, once the acutal product is there and proves to be profitable, technology advances much more strongly in that direction, helping to drive prices down and get more customers and markets.

The Model S is comparable in purchase price to an otherwise equivalent gas-powered car. It's a large, high performance luxury sedan, and other cars of that size, horsepower, and trim level run $75 - $100k as well.

That's not exactly a scenario I or most other people do often enough to make it influence which car I buy. For the once a decade I need to get from NYC to LA in a day and a half, I can rent or take a plane.

Of course, the irony here is once the Supercharger network finishes building out along I-40, I may very well drive from coast to coast a few times, since the Superchargers are cheaper than airfare.

I'd like an electric car. The one thing about living in Quebec is relatively affordable hydroelectricity. However I wonder how an electric car will fare in winter when 33% of the battery will go to heating. At least that's the number they mentionned for the electric buses they're trying in Laval, you have to almost cut the summer range in half for winter. The motors work harder too to cut across snow.

I leased a Focus Electric and drove it through about half of this winter in Minnesota. I initially was only going to drive it through the easy months, but this winter gave me examples of almost every sort of ugly possibility.

The car did well enough through all the ugliness that I'm going to use it year round. The range did drop off dramatically on the days when it was about 0 (F). But my commute is only 7 miles, so there was really no problem with using it for getting to work. The other thing that helped was that the car could be warmed up while it was still plugged in. I was also going to get a stage 2 charger installed, but with my typical daily use, the car is fully charged off 110 after midnight. I don't think I'll get a stage 2 charger until I get a second electric.

I've always thought what they could do is incorporate a small, propane powered generator, like say around 2.0KW. To get an estimate of the size, honda makes a 2kw one that is about the size of a small suitcase, and weighs around 50lbs.

Maybe make it a modular add-in that you can take in and out of the trunk.
The generator is way too small to actively power the car, but it could be ran so that the heat of the motor could be used to warm the cabin (like all gas vehicles do today) when it is extremely cold. The electricity it provided would extend range much, but it would keep you out of resistive heat, which is a real waster.. It would also provide a means of emergency charging for a stranded vehicle

I'd make it propane, because in a quality tank, the stuff lasts virtually forever, and it burns really clean.

While I think it's awesome that they did this, and it sends a powerful message, there seems to be another implied flaw in the plan...

Perhaps the idea of the gub'mint giving them this loan was that it was to offset their startup/r&d/production costs in the early years before they were able to get to full on mass production (I mean large scale, like the level of other established & successful auto manufacturers). So much that with that offset, they would have been able to offer their vehicles to the

Tesla doesn't seem to be having much of a problem in terms of market penetration because their factory has barely been able to keep up with the people willing to simply purchase them over the internet or through convoluted sales venues that make the customers travel across several states or even from other countries and continents in order to make a purchase. Only recently has the delay from making a purchase to getting delivery even approached the logistical limits of the Tesla supply chain rather than dealing with the customer backlog and even paying other customers to "move to the front of the line" to get the delivery earlier.

Simply put, if Tesla is charging what the market can bear on their product, they are simply practicing capitalism... something I didn't think was a crime in America.

As for the government missing out on interest income, I think they are going to more than make up for that loss through corporate income taxes and taxes on the wages of the Tesla employees.... and federal excise taxes on the vehicles themselves. It might be in some weird theory a slight loss to the government, but not much. What it really did was give Tesla some short-term operating capital that allowed the company to be able to hire the employees at the old NUMMI plant at a time when they weren't selling cars.

We see many situations where US companies spend their cash to reduce their capitalization instead of investing. I understand it means they have too much money in their hand. That is, they do not pay enough taxes.